They wrapped Bobby Gallagher’s corpse in a hospital sheet shroud and carried him over to a pick-up truck to be driven back to the morgue. They couldn’t spare an ambulance, not now the fire had overrun the control line and everyone was in full retreat. The energy in the field hospital was different too; it had settled and hardened, like everything did under pressure. No one spoke, everyone carried on preparing for casualties, knowing now exactly what those casualties would look, smell and sound like.
Solomon studied the fire from the shade of the billboard, his mind ticking with information – wind-speed calculations, open burn rates of desert wildfires, what fire did to human flesh. He listened to the roar of the flames, and the gusting wind and the birds, shrieking raptors and carrion birds drawn by the promise of death. He followed their shrieks until he spotted them, high above the town, wheeling in the thermals that rose up the red-sided mountains, then blown forward by stronger winds whipping across the mountaintop. They were blowing in the opposite direction to the one pushing the fire towards town. Different weather fronts.
‘I wanted to say thank you.’ The doctor who had treated the dying man was standing in front of him, a badge pinned to his breast pocket identifying him as Dr M. Palmer. ‘I panicked, I guess,’ he continued. ‘I wasn’t thinking. You were right to do what you did. Bobby died in peace instead of clinging to false hope. It was a very kind thing you did for him.’
Kind …
Had he held the dying man’s hand out of kindness? He didn’t think so. He had done it because he had known no one else would and that it was the right thing to do. He had known this with the same certainty he knew what things were just by looking at them, and that he was here to save someone.
‘James Coronado,’ he murmured.
The doctor frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘He was brought to the hospital, I assume, after his accident?’
‘He was DOA, so would have gone straight to the morgue. They only come to the ER if they’re still breathing.’
‘But his notes will be on record at the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think I might see them?’
Palmer shook his head. ‘The only people allowed to see that would be next-of-kin.’
Holly Coronado. All roads led to the widow. ‘Thank you, Dr Palmer,’ Solomon said.
He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome.’ He looked past him to where the refugees from the desert were now gathering around a pick-up truck. Some were still wearing their old-style funeral clothes, making them seem like they’d stepped out of the town’s past, drawn by the prospect of witnessing its end.
Mayor Cassidy climbed up on to the back of the truck and held his hands up for silence. ‘Friends. Listen to me now.’ All eyes turned to him. ‘We have all witnessed a tragedy here, a terrible tragedy, and there will be a proper time to dwell on that. But that time is not now. Bobby Gallagher gave his life helping defend his town from the threat of this fire and the threat still remains and continues to grow. So the best way we can honour our friend is to make sure he did not lay down his life in vain. Now we got more fire tankers, big ones, in the air and on their way here – am I right, Chief?’
Morgan climbed up next to him. ‘Yessir. Two C-130s heading up out of Tucson.’
A picture of a solid plane with a snub nose appeared in Solomon’s mind – broad fuselage, four sturdy propeller engines slung below a wide straight wing.
‘We also got the local unit back at the airfield, readyin’ up for another run. Between those and what we all can do here on the ground, we can beat this thing.’
C-130 payload is 2,700 gallons. It could lay a fire line sixty feet wide and a quarter mile long.
Solomon stared back out at the desert, estimating the size of the fire using the burning grader for scale. The grader was thirty feet long, which meant the fire was …
Too big. Much too big.
‘Now you all need to regroup and get back out there fast. Take some water then grab your tools and head back out …’
The distant shrieks of the high-flying birds snagged Solomon’s attention again. He looked up and zoned Morgan out, listening to their cries as they were blown forward by the high winds. He caught a scent now too, drifting down from higher up, something buried so deep it was hardly there at all, but was enough to pin a hope on.
He looked back at Morgan finishing his speech.
‘… We’ll set back-burns to clear the ground about a half a mile out of town. The tankers will draw most of the line for us, but until then it’s up to us to hold it.’
‘That’s no good,’ Solomon called out, before he realized he had spoken.
All eyes turned to him. ‘What’s that?’ Morgan said.
‘Half a mile is too far.’ Solomon moved towards the truck. ‘Too much desert to cover.’ He held his hand up and swept it through the grey ash falling all around them. ‘This is going to start falling hot soon, so any control line with dry desert behind it is going to start catching alight. You’ll have spot fires springing up all over and not nearly enough people to cover them.’ He reached the truck and leapt nimbly up to join Morgan and Cassidy. ‘The fire will jump your line and keep on coming. Your best chance is to try and hold it at the narrowest point.
Morgan’s face went pink. ‘You an expert on firefighting too, Mr Creed?’
‘No, but I know history.’ He turned to the crowd. ‘Over two thousand years ago three hundred Spartan warriors held back a quarter of a million Persian warriors by forcing them into a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea.’ He pointed left out into the desert. ‘The desert is narrowest right here in the bottleneck between the storm drain and the spill piles from the mine. This is where we can hold the fire.’
A murmur rose from the crowd, then the crackle of radio chatter silenced them again.
This is Charlie three-one-four-niner, inbound from Tucson, do you read, over?
Morgan tilted his head to his lapel mic. ‘This is Chief Morgan, I read you. Glad to have you with us, over.’
Roger that. I’m hailing you on an open frequency with Charlie eight-six-five-zero, also inbound from Tucson. We have a visual on the smokestack and will be starting our run in less than a minute. Tell us what you need.
In the distance the twin specks of the planes appeared in the sky. ‘How long will it take them to refill and fly back here?’ Solomon said.
The air was thick with ash now, billowing in the gusting wind like clouds of insects.
‘Forty minutes,’ Cassidy said. ‘Maybe less.’
‘This fire will be at the church doors in forty minutes. You should get the tankers to lay the line right here. It’s your best chance. Your only chance.’
Solomon felt all eyes upon him and saw fear and uncertainty in them. They were desperate to be led but unsure who to follow, and this indecision made the rage rise in him again. Part of him wanted to leave them to it, just walk away and up into the mountains where he could sit and watch the town burn, as surely it would if they followed Morgan’s plan. The fire was mighty and these people were nothing.
But …
If the town burned he would have failed. He knew that too. And if the town was gone, any chance of discovering what had happened to James Coronado would be gone with it. And where would that leave him? Would the fire keep coming? Would the world burn wherever he walked until eventually the flames caught up with him?
‘What about the buildings?’ Cassidy said. ‘The hot ash will drift on to those too.’
A murmur spread through the crowd and heads nodded in agreement.
Sheep. All sheep. Agreeing with whatever the last person said. They deserved to be slaughtered.
Solomon’s arm flared in pain, a reminder of his mission here. He could hear the chop of the propellers getting louder above the roar of the fire. Another minute and they would be here. Less.
He turned to the crowd. ‘If a glowing ember falls on a patch of dry grass or a roof shingle, which is more likely to catch fire?’
The faces stared up at him, some of the heads nodding in agreement with him now as they realized what he was getting at.
‘If we douse the buildings and spread out with buckets of water and rakes, we can deal with any fires that start. There aren’t enough of you to do the same out in the desert and the fires will catch faster. Too much area to cover, not enough bodies on the ground. You need to make your stand here. Make your stand, or start running. Your choice.’ He turned back to Morgan and lowered his voice so only he and Cassidy could hear: ‘Make it fast.’
The first plane roared overhead, the deep bass rumble of its engines pounding in Solomon’s chest.
This is Charlie three-one-four-niner. I see a partial control line southeast of the road and a breach to the northwest. We can lay a line along the fire’s edge, if that’s what you need, keep it back for ya. Give the word and we’ll set up for a run, over.
Morgan didn’t move. He stared at Solomon, blinded by his fury at being told what to do in front of his people by this stranger.
‘Give me the radio,’ Cassidy said, grabbing it from Morgan’s belt. ‘This is Ernest Cassidy, town mayor. We want you to lay a line right on the edge of town, understand. All along the old mining shacks. Give us a minute to pull back then paint the town red, over.’ He thrust the radio back to Morgan. ‘Someone’s got to take charge of this mess.’ He stuck a smile on his face and turned back to the crowd. ‘You heard me. Everybody needs to fall back and we’ll split into teams to make sure we got the whole area behind the line covered. OK, let’s move it.’
The crowd splintered like a dropped plate, glad to be doing something again, glad to be following a leader.
‘It’s a fine thing,’ Morgan said quietly; ‘the man who brought this fire now telling us how to put it out.’
Solomon smiled. ‘I didn’t say we could put it out, I only said we could hold it back. The fire is a force of nature, an act of God.’
‘So what do we do – pray for a miracle and hope for the best?’
Solomon looked up at the birds again and breathed in. The smell was clearer now and getting stronger as the higher winds blew it ever closer. It was the coal-tar smell of wet creosote bush. His force of nature. His act of God.
The smell of rain in the desert.